Archer 16-year-old runs her own mustang rescue and education center

by Josslyn Howard

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16-year old Cat Zimmerman can’t drive yet, but she can run a mustang rescue.

“Knowing that there are 45 thousand of these horses that were once wild stuck in holding pens, not really having anywhere to go, it kind of just drives me to want to do this more and more,” Zimmerman said. “So it gives me more of a purpose.”

Mustang is just a title for ‘wild horse.’ These wild horses get gathered by the Bureau of Land Management because of over population and then are place in holding pens to keep them from roaming.

“They just get put in the holding pens and that’s where they have to get adopted out or they just have to stay there,” Zimmerman said.

They need to become tamed and trained to find a good home, which is where Zimmerman comes in.

“We take them and get them from situations where they’ve been abandoned or can’t be cared for anymore and we rehabilitate them and train them to be something that’s better than that and make sure they can be in a home and not worry where they are going to end up next,” Zimmerman said.

She’s been training wild mustangs since she was 12 years old, and she’s good at it.

This 16-year-old opened a Mustang Education Center where she holds clinics for other trainers and has been named an ambassador for the Mustang Heritage Foundation.

“I take these horses when they’re muddy and scared and untrusting,” Zimmerman said. “I can turn them into a show horse if I can bring them to the showring against the other horses and people won’t even know they are a mustang.”

Along with rescuing the horses, Zimmerman wants to give mustangs a positive name by performing, competing and winning with them.

“You don’t have to have the most expensive horse or the most expensive things,” Zimmerman said. “I buy my horses for 25 dollars and they are just as good as all of these other horses, if not better.”